July 08, 2025
By Lily Padula
Every day, Illinois residents navigate a web of roads that shape how we live and work. Whether it’s a smooth morning commute or a frustrating encounter with a pothole, the conditions of our roads affect us all. We expect roads to be safe, smooth, and dependable, but what many don’t see is the complicated system beyond that asphalt: a fragmented network of local and state governments that each play a role in maintaining our streets. Few residents realize just how fragmented and complex that responsibility really is. From townships to state agencies, this overlapping patchwork makes a consistent standard of road care difficult to achieve. Utilizing data from the Illinois Roadway Analysis Database System, or IROADS, we can better understand how this fragmented oversight creates real-world challenges and why it matters to drivers, taxpayers, and policymakers alike.
Mapping the Problem: Who Maintains What?
Glenview, a village in Cook County, approximately 15 miles northwest of the Chicago Loop, provides a particularly useful example for visualizing the fragmentation of road jurisdictions. Its borders contain roads maintained by the municipality itself, the township, the county, and the state, making it an ideal case to showcase how responsibilities are divided. The map below reveals a patchwork of color-coded authorities—municipal (blue), township (green), county (yellow), and state (red)—that underscore the inconsistency in road management across even a single suburb. On a road like West Lake Avenue (highlighted purple below) that cuts east/west through the village, control shifts between the state and the municipality in a short span, with real implications for service consistency.
Why It Matters: Costs, Coordination, and Confusion
Glenview’s jurisdictional map offers a window into a broader problem facing communities across Illinois. When multiple agencies are responsible for different stretches of road, the result isn’t just visual complexity; it’s operational inefficiency. Administrative duplication, inconsistent maintenance standards, and gaps in coordination all contribute to a system that is more costly and less effective than it should be. Residents must contact different entities depending on the road’s governing entity, complicating issue resolution and increasing administrative overhead. Additionally, each jurisdiction operates under its own budget and agenda. For example, though Illinois’ state-level spending per lane-mile rose 30% from 2019 to 2022, road conditions worsened, partly due to political prioritization of “pork projects” over systemic needs.
Multiple jurisdictions with funding disparities can lead to inconsistent maintenance standards and overall higher costs. Municipalities like the Village of Glenview manage their roads independently, leading to uneven resource allocation for roads maintained by different jurisdictions. Meanwhile, townships and road districts in unincorporated areas rely on smaller budgets, often delaying repairs or relying on homeowners’ associations to maintain private roads. These smaller jurisdictions also miss out on bulk procurement and coordinated planning, which drives up costs. In 2022, Illinois spent $98,386 per lane-mile, more than twice what Minnesota spent, partly due to fragmented procurement and redundant processes.
This jurisdictional patchwork can also cause coordination challenges and delayed response times. Formal coordination agreements between jurisdictions are limited, creating service gaps as municipalities fail to collaborate on projects. For instance, transit systems in fragmented regions such as Glenview often fail to align routes across boundaries, mirroring road maintenance inefficiencies. Additionally, residents reporting issues must navigate multiple contact numbers, slowing response times during crises like potholes or winter storms.
This fragmentation encourages short-term fixes over strategic investments. Delaying repairs increases long-term costs, as seen in studies of underfunded road networks. Moreover, localized decision-making often prioritizes visible projects such as new developments over cost-effective maintenance, exacerbating inefficiencies. Ultimately, without coordinated oversight and planning, these inefficiencies will continue to compound, making it increasingly difficult to maintain safe, reliable, and cost-effective roads.
Fixing Fragmentation: Strategies for Road Management
Improving the coordination, efficiency, and equity of road maintenance and infrastructure across jurisdictions requires the adoption of structured, data-informed, and collaborative approaches. The following strategies, in no particular order, present potential solutions:
1. Performance-Based Budgeting (PBB) and Decision-Making
- Adopting performance-based budgeting (PBB), as implemented in states like Minnesota, can help prioritize infrastructure projects based on objective criteria such as urgency, condition, and anticipated public benefit. By reducing the influence of political considerations, PBB promotes transparency, aligns funding with needs, and ensures that critical repairs and high-impact projects receive priority, ultimately leading to improved outcomes for residents and more efficient use of limited resources.
2. Integrated Asset Management Systems
- Implementing comprehensive asset management plans, such as the Illinois Department of Transportation’s (IDOT) Transportation Asset Management Plan, allows jurisdictions to track asset conditions, set performance targets, and coordinate investment strategies over the full lifecycle of infrastructure. These systems facilitate data-driven decision-making and can promote greater alignment and collaboration between state and local agencies, helping to standardize priorities and improve efficiency across jurisdictions.
3. Regional or Centralized Coordination Bodies
- Establishing regional transportation authorities or intergovernmental task forces can help coordinate planning, funding, and maintenance activities across state, county, municipal, and township levels. Establishing these authorities or task forces can help streamline project selection, reduce duplication, and ensure consistent service standards when done correctly, especially in metropolitan areas with fragmented governance.
4. Formalized Interagency Agreements
- Developing more robust intergovernmental agreements for shared maintenance, procurement, and emergency response can reduce overlaps and gaps in service. By establishing these agreements, jurisdictions can clarify responsibilities, pool resources, and enable joint contracting for services or materials. This would reduce administrative duplicities, leading to cost savings and improved service delivery.
5. Standardization of Policies and Procedures
- Standardization of maintenance policies, procedures, and reporting systems across jurisdictions minimizes confusion for residents and staff, ensuring consistent quality, and simplifying training and oversight. IDOT’s current efforts to develop and enforce uniform guidelines for its districts could be extended or adopted by local governments.
6. Enhanced Public Reporting and Transparency Tools
- Expanding the use of centralized reporting platforms, such as the 311 system, and making project and maintenance data publicly available can improve accountability, facilitate resident engagement, and help identify persistent gaps or inefficiencies in service.
7. Consolidation of Responsibilities
- Consolidating road maintenance responsibilities where feasible can help eliminate duplication, streamline oversight, and improve economies of scale. Whether through transferring control from townships to municipalities or through the creation of regional service providers, consolidation may enhance long-term planning and service delivery by centralizing expertise and resources under fewer entities.
Conclusion
The fragmentation of road responsibilities leads to real-world consequences: costly redundancies, inequitable service, and poor long-term outcomes. Understanding who controls what and how is crucial for both policymakers and residents advocating for better service. Whether through policy reform, public engagement, or data innovation, stakeholders must explore ways to modernize and coordinate road maintenance for a more efficient and equitable future.